Truth Decay? ASA Examines Brush Maker’s Dentist-Recommended Claims
This article was originally published in The Rose Sheet
Executive Summary
A preference poll of 46 dentists – used to support Wisdom Toothbrushes’ claim “Recommended by 100% of dental professionals” – was central to a dispute between oral-care rivals adjudicated by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority, which published its decision in the matter June 29.
Small sample sizes in preference polls and perception tests may not make related claims misleading per se, but Wisdom Toothbrushes Ltd still needs to do a better job of qualifying and supporting its dentist-recommended claims, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority says in a June 29 ruling.
Challenger TePe Oral Hygiene Products Ltd directed ASA to advertising for Wisdom Clean Between Interdental Brushes that appeared in March in Dental Health magazine and at wisdom-toothbrushes.com.
The Swiss toothpaste manufacturer questioned whether Wisdom’s claim “Recommended by 100% of dental professionals” was adequately substantiated or potentially misleading.
The claim featured on Wisdom’s web homepage beside an image of the product. The print ad touted the toothbrush line’s “superior design” as the basis for dentists’ partiality.
While the latter included small print at the bottom of the page specifying the 100% statistic’s source – a poll of dental professionals conducted between October 2013 and 2014 – the qualifying information was not available online until site visitors clicked through to the product page, ASA notes.
Neither ad disclosed the sample size of the survey at issue.
In its response to ASA, Wisdom provided detail on its poll, explaining that it invited UK dentists at trade shows to complete a questionnaire online where they were asked, among other things, “Would you recommend this product to patients in practice?”
Results provided by the advertiser show that 46 respondents all had answered in the affirmative.
The England-based firm – which bills itself as “the inventor of the modern-day toothbrush,” with a history tracing back 235 years to its founding as Addis by English entrepreneur William Addis – defended the limited sample size of its poll, making comparisons to others used to support claims in the personal-care product sector.
According to Wisdom, its sample size of 46 dental professionals – among 107,052 in the UK as of November 2015 – was “significantly more representative” than those cited in a handful of beauty and skin-care examples it offered.
ASA, however, was more concerned with how closely Wisdom’s claims matched the evidence provided by its survey results. The independent advertising regulator noted that while a preference poll was the basis for its promotional messaging, an objective claim was being made – that its product was the toothbrush of choice for all dental professionals and was actively recommended by them.
Just because all 46 responses submitted by Wisdom were from dentists who answered yes to its recommendation question does not necessarily mean that all dentists the company polled were accounted for in the results, ASA reasons. Wisdom’s evidence was insufficient to clarify the matter.
Further, dentists who theoretically “would” recommend Wisdom’s product do not carry the same weight as those who actually are recommending it. “We noted that the poll results did not record whether they already did so or went on to do so,” ASA says.
In fact, the group points out, “a number of the answers provided to the open-ended questions featured in the poll indicated that some of the respondents had not used or recommended the products in their practices.”
ASA concludes that the poll does not adequately support the claim “Recommended by 100% of dental professionals” and is therefore in breach of UK advertising codes.
Going forward, Wisdom should ensure that its claims are properly qualified and backed by robust evidence, it says.